


You can't take the sky from me...

by Catolyn



Category: Firefly, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Humor (I hope), I Don't Even Know, My brain is a strage place, Please Don't Kill Me, SHIELD is full of Browncoats, What Was I Thinking?, memos from fury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catolyn/pseuds/Catolyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone (or several someones) are trying to name the helicarrier - whackiness and tormenting Director Fury follows.</p><p>Inspired by this <a href="http://memosfromfury.tumblr.com/post/42527606878/as-much-as-the-other-director-and-i-sympathize#notes">Memo From Fury</a> because I am a sick and twisted individual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You can't take the sky from me...

**Author's Note:**

> This is pure unadulterated, unbeta'd, crack. I apologize for inflicting this on ya'll. Please don't hunt me down and kill me.
> 
> Rating because Nick Fury has a filthy mouth.
> 
> Nothing belongs to me, I am making no money.

A tentative knock brought Director Nick Fury’s attention from the absolute cluserfuck of a report he was reading to Special Agent Sitwell who was lurking uncertainly in his doorway. “Director Fury sir?”

He pushed the stack of reports back across his desk; giant amorous squid, courtesy of some hair brained scientist with a fondness for cephalopods, did not make for enjoyable reading. The fact was parts of coastal New Jersey had ended up resembling a Japanese henti film and every available agent and Avenger were now thoroughly traumatized. The reports coming in from the shrinks seemed to indicate a strong aversion to any kind of tentacled sea life on behalf of the agents and Avengers on hand for that call.

Hell, he was sure he was never going to be able to order calamari again. He sighed. “Yes Sitwell? I swear to fucking god if you tell me that von Doom is attacking New York again I _will_ shoot the messenger.”

Sitwell nodded briskly. “I understand sir.”

“And? Do I need to shoot you?” Fury's tone of voice was terse and his expression was barely civil.

“No, no sir!”

Fury glared his second best glare. “Then why for the love of god and little green apples are you darkening my door? I have another two reports to finish reviewing before I get to have my very well deserved cigar and scotch. And if the carrier isn’t falling out of the sky or Tony Stark hasn’t goaded Doctor Banner in to turning large, angry, and green I don’t really give a flying fuck.”

“Well sir it has to do with the carrier.” began Sitwell, hesitantly.

Fury arched one eyebrow and folded his hands on his desk in front of him. Telegraphing to his fourth in command that unless an explanation was promptly forthcoming he was going to start shooting.

“When one of our airborne patrols were returning to the flight deck sir, they noted some, well, some graffiti on the outside of the hull.”

“Excuse me? You’re trying to tell me that someone _tagged_ a covert flying aircraft carrier with graffiti?!” his expression clearly disbelieving.

Sitwell looked decidedly sheepish as he tried to maintain eye contact with his superior officer, “Um, yes sir, it would seem that way.”

“And just _what_ did we get tagged with Sitwell?” he asked, trying not to clench his teeth. His dentist swore the teeth clenching was why he kept getting headaches, but somedays it was clench his teeth or start shooting people.

Sitwell took several steps forward and handed Fury a photograph. Someone, and if he was going to start taking guesses he’d guess it was Stark, had painted a large yellow circle, surrounded by a yet larger red circle, and in the center of the yellow, several Chinese characters. “Have you had the characters translated yet Jasper?”

“Yes, Director, we have. The characters seem to mean ‘to wait for serenity...’ in Mandarin.”

“Motherfucker.” muttered the director. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out his bottle of scotch and a glass. He poured himself a generous measure, took a quick slug, and set the glass back down.

“Have that section of the hull repainted. And get me any security footage you can from the outside of the ship, I want to find out who’s decided it’s time to get all Banksy with my ship! Dismissed!”

Agent Sitwell snapped to attention, saluted, and fled the directors office with all due haste.

Fury took another sip of his scotch. His money was on Stark being the actual perpetrator, but knowing the merry band of misfits as he did there were sure to be several co-conspirators. Rogers was right out, the man might be willing to disobey orders when he thought his team’s safety was at risk, but he largely had stayed clear of the pranking war that seemed to have broken out between Stark, Barton, Lewis, and of all people Banner. There was some occasional involvement from Romanova and Coulson that mostly seemed to revolve around psychological warfare tactics, but the ringleaders were well documented.

He sighed again and looked at the reports on his desk before deciding there was no amount of scotch in the world to make reading about amorous squid something he was willing to continue to do and gave it up as a lost cause.

\--------------

A week and a half later Fury was at his wits end, convinced that if he had any hair left on his head he’d be tearing it out by its roots.

The symbol that had originally appeared on the exterior hull of the helicarrier had begun showing up all over the ship. So far the exterior had been tagged twice more, one helicopter, two quinjets, and more interior corridors than he could count. The problem now was that he was fairly sure it _wasn’t_ Stark, Barton, Lewis, Banner, Rogers, Romanova, _or_ Coulson; they’d all returned to New York after the squid incident and hadn’t been on the carrier since. But the symbol kept appearing. 

Of course he wouldn’t put it past Stark or Lewis to have somehow subverted some of the junior agents. Fury was still fairly sure that recruiting Lewis had been a huge mistake - or Coulson performing some subtle act of revenge for letting the Avengers team believe he’d been dead for eight months. As a form of revenge on Coulson for recruiting her Fury had made her Coulsons assistant liaison to the Avengers initiative - in hindsight it was, perhaps, not a wise decision.

The last straw was when that damnable symbol appeared on his command deck, stenciled on the back of his rarely used chair.

Turning to his usually unflappable second he snapped. “Hill! Get Agent Lewis up here. Now!”

“Sir?” she asked, clearly confused.

He snarled as he stalked back to his office, “Just do it. I want Lewis in my office within the hour!”

Fifty nine minutes later Junior Special Agent Darcy Lewis bounced into his office with her usual lack of decorum and protocol; wearing black slacks, a remarkably bright blue blouse that was so far out of regulation he didn’t even know where to start, and tactical combat boots. “Afternoon Director! Scary boss lady Hill said you need to see me?”

“ _Assistant Director_ Hill is your superior officer, but she isn’t nearly as frightening as I am.” he growled.

Darcy sauntered across the room and dropped gracelessly into a chair. “So what do you need? I thought you and Coulson agreed that I’m not ready to be let out on real missions yet. I’m destined for a life of back up in the van and fetching coffee.”

He pulled a photograph off his desk and handed it to her. “Are you familiar with that symbol Agent Lewis?”

She glanced at it, “Serenity!” she said chipperly.

“Can you explain it? Better yet can you explain why it is showing up all over my fucking ship?” 

“It’s from Firefly.” Her expression was unfortunately reminiscent of his youngest son when he was explaining something he thought his father should _clearly_ get and ‘Oh my god dad how can you be so out of touch?’.

He refrained from yelling, barely. “Can you please explain what that is without devolving any further into that pit of pop culture you call a brain.”

“Hey, you came to me. No need to get cranky.” she retorted quickly, and then gulped when he glared and snatched the photograph out of her hand. “Um, not that you’re cranky. Clearly you are entirely made of sweetness and light. Sir.”

Fury scowled at her and crossed his arms.

She leaned back in her chair, as far away from the fuming director as possible, and began to speak a mile a minute. “Um, right Firefly. Short lived space Western themed TV show in 02. Centered around a crew of smugglers who lived on a Firefly class starship called Serenity. Huge fan based following. It got canceled. Super unfairly because it was practically the best thing on TV at the time. Great sets, acting, and characters. Awesome plot and dialogue. Written and directed by Joss Whedon. The fan following was enough to convince the studios to give the show a movie about three years after it was canceled. Mostly as a way to wrap up a bunch of story lines from the show that never got addressed. Ten years later it’s STILL a hugely popular kick ass show. So I’m guessing someone on board is a brown coat and either thinks you’re the Alliance or this is the Serenity.” She caught his glower. “Right so in the story there was a revolution, people who wanted to be left alone and didn’t want to be part of the big government and then there was the Alliance. There was a big battle at a place called Serenity Valley. The rebels lost. The Alliance won. Um, and the rebels were usually called the ‘Brown Coats’ because, well their uniform jackets were brown.”

“Are you suggesting I have a rebellion on my hands?” he asked with an arched brow.

“No, I’m suggesting you maybe have some really enthusiastic fans. Also people who are drawing parallels between a flying aircraft carrier full of violent, specially trained people and a spaceship full of violent, specially trained people. Though to be honest sir, your whole ‘My ship.’ thing, very Captain Mal. And the long coat doesn’t hurt.” and she gave him an approving thumbs up.

He gave her a considering look, “And you’re saying you have nothing to do with this?”

Her eyes got large, “I _might_ have recced the show to a few other people in my training group last month. And we _might_ have marathoned all thirteen episodes AND the movie over a weekend. And I think it might have come up, after a couple of beers, that the carrier doesn’t have a name...” and she let her voice trail off.

Fury looked at her, his expression pained, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That will be all Agent. Dismissed.”

She jumped to her feet, saluted, and bolted for the door with a quickly exclaimed “Yes sir!”

Outside of Fury’s office she pulled her phone out of her pocket and fired off a message to several numbers, “Browncoats - Assemble!” and she strode off chortling in pleasure.

\--------------

By the end of the week the Serenity symbol had shown up on the firing range, the gym, the medical bay, and three new places on the exterior hull. And he still hadn’t managed to catch _anyone_ in the act.

He was walking past one of the rec rooms where a group of junior agents were watching something with the lights turned down. “Burn the land and boil the sea! You can’t take the sky from me!” chorused the agents, remarkably on key most of them.

Fury lurked at the back of the room and watched. Clearly this was the show that Lewis had been talking about. He slipped into a chair at the back of the room and put his feet up to watch. After a while he got up and made his way back to his office. While he had to admit Lewis was probably right about the parallels between a flying aircraft carrier full of violent, specially trained people and a spaceship full of violent, specially trained people the graffiti really needed to stop. He was verging on apoplexy every time another symbol turned up.

And the carrier most assuredly did NOT need a name, regardless of what the junior agents and Miss Butter Wouldn’t Melt in Her Mouth Lewis thought.

He drafted a memo and sent it to every SHIELD personnel stationed on the carrier and cc’d the Avengers team for good measure.

\--------------

Darcy sauntered into the living room at the Tower and flopped down on the sofa, planting her feet in Clint’s lap. Clint scooped her feet up off his legs and dumped them on the floor and continued to watch his show. She huffed at him in annoyance, and stuck her feet under his thigh.

Bruce wandered in a short time later, reading messages on his tablet. “So, do I _want_ to know what prompted Fury’s latest memo?” he asked as he joined them on the couch.

Clint cocked an eyebrow and jerked his head in Darcy’s direction, “Ask her.”

“Coulson gave me an assignment in subversion.” she said with a smirk. “He never said _what_ I had to subvert. So I might have encouraged some of my fellow junior agents that the helicarrier should be named.”

Coulson strode into the room and graced his protegee an impassive look before settling down on the other end of the couch, “Well I have to give you points for creativity. Despite the Director’s memo I’ve heard no fewer than a dozen people call the carrier ‘Serenity’ and there seems to be a permanent Firefly marathon going in rec room four. Though you did cost considerable resources in repainting sections of the ship.”

Darcy smirked again, “You never said I couldn’t have any overhead boss, you just said I had to do something subversive. Next time, be more specific.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, practically a smile. “I will keep that in mind for future exercises in espionage and subversion.”

“Hey Clint?” she asked.

“S’up?”

She nudged him with the toe of her right foot, “Did you finish that last tag?” 

He grinned, his expression devious, “I finished it last night when I went to pick Natasha up from the carrier.”

Darcy cackled gleefully and rubbed her hands together.

\--------------

Fury shut his office door, crossed the room, and sat down at his desk to finish reviewing the weekly requisition reports. He glanced up only to see a familiar red and yellow symbol on the inside of his office door. “Motherfucker!” he shouted.

**Author's Note:**

> Lurking around on tumblr these days at http://catolynwrites.tumblr.com/


End file.
